skip to gallerymarch 2013: keeley hawes has just popped up in bbc's remake of the hitchcock classic, the lady vanishes. rumour has it that this was supposed to have been shown at christmas, but was canned and if that is true then having seen it i can certainly believe it. it is awful! it is the exact opposite of the classic film. no tension, no humour and two leads you are given absolutely no reason to warm to. it feels like hollywood done in beaconsfield. sylvia young does hollywood.

the only actor to come out of it with any credit is keeley. she is head and shoulders above anyone else and because her role is small you just wish she had more screentime.

there's a couple of actors from doc martin and you just wish the doc would appear and put this production out of its misery. no kiss of life could save it. the excellent stephanie cole dies in doc martin and her resurrection is in this?? know it is closer to the book than hitchcock's version but the ending is awful and feels like an afterthought. hitchcock was the master of screen tension and knew what would work on the big screen no matter what it said in the book. that is great film-making.

it was filmed in hungary and does look authentc although the colour is limp, wish-washy, a bit-like the coolness of that other bbc-destroys-hitchock production, the 39 steps, a few years back. the atmospheric kelety station in budapest was used exclusively for this production over two nights.